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series: category:
F ast R ender
category:
F
content:
- understand how to paint digitally over a photo to generate ideas
- learn how to control and develop your design as you sketch
- use large and textured brushes to gradually form the sketch
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About the author
Miles graduated from Coventry Universitys Transport De-sign course in 1999 and has since worked as an automo-
tive and product designer for companies such as Pininfa-
rina, Volvo and SAIC, as well as Movado watches, product
design consultancies and as a freelance product designer.
Knowledge is Power - How to use
Insight Tutorials
The purpose of these tutorials is to explain not only what
is being done but why during the process of a sketch. The
aim is that you can either apply these ideas to your own
work or modify them to your liking. Everybody works in adifferent way and it is not my intention here to produce a
software user guide with a series of commands that canbe followed to produce exactly the same illustration. This
would not only be impossible but would not in my opin-
ion achieve the best long-term results. Every part of the
process is not explained in every tutorial so that repeti-
tion is kept to a minimum and each tutorial can be used
to analyse slightly different aspects more deeply, giving
maximum value and efciency.
These tutorials focus on explaining honestly the thought
and action process I go through using my normal work-
ing methods, with high resolution visuals and highlighted
areas to eliminate confusion as to what part of the sketch
is being described; simply hover the mouse over the
highlighted words and a halo will appear over the relevantarea on the sketch.
This will hopefully give you the power and understanding
to improve your own work in your own way by introducing
methods, tips and a few tricks that you can apply to digital
sketches in whichever way you feel most comfortable. Al-
most all of the principles also apply to analogue sketchingbut the techniques are sometimes different. It is the most
commonly used software therefore the commands and
tools highlighted refer specically to Photoshop but are
not exclusive to that program.
The power of insight means that you will hopefully startyour next sketch with new ideas and fresh inspirationthat will inject a big advancement into your work. If you
are a student or hoping to become a student of automo-
tive design then, in my opinion, the faster you can gain
this knowledge the better in order to gain a competitive
advantage. Remember the last time you made a big
improvement in one drawing and realised you could sud-
denly work at a higher level than before? Those eurekamoments are what its all about.
One of the reasons I have produced these as e-books is
so that the images are on your screen without the need
for scanning. All the images used in this pdf are included
as jpegs that you can open in your favourite software andwork over if you wish. In fact I highly recommend workingover the top of these images if you are trying to duplicate
them. You can even make a slideshow out of them to use
as a screensaver to remind you of the process.
By all means try and re-create the illustration if it inspiresyou (and I sincerely hope it does). I have received many
sketches that people have produced after following my
tutorials and they are sometimes very similar, sometimes
more of an interpretation in their own work. Either way
they express inspiration and usually demonstrate an
understanding and advance which has encouraged meto continue producing more tutorials. Above all read andfamiliarise yourself with the narrative and how it relates to
the sketch at each stage, then try to use it inparallelwith
your own work and have it alongside you as a reference.
You need to work hard to improve your sketching and
there is no substitute for practice but it is what you learn
and apply to your practice that will make the difference.
Remember - sketching and rendering is a tool and is only
part of the design process. It is however the rst creativevisual step and sets the tone for the quality of the nished
product. It is also the skill which best illustrates your ability
to visualise ideas. It shows whether or not you understand
and can evaluate form, which follows function and com-
pletes a successful design. At the early stages of your
automotive design career especially you will be judgedmost strongly by your abilities in this area when being se-lected to study design or work professionally in this highly
competitive eld.
Good luck and happy sketching,
Miles Waterhouse BA (hons) - Transport Design
Page 2
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The aim for this tutorial is to concentrate on how and why
changes and developments were made to the sketch. The
rst slide shows how bold and broad brushstrokes can bemade over a photograph used as an underlay to spark
ideas from the beginning.
There are some speedpainting techniques used here. For
example, the ideas ow after the sketch has started and
the concept is born along with the rendering. The advan-tages of this are a higher likelihood of original ideas and
a potentially exciting voyage into the unknown - youre
never sure what youre going to get when you start out
with this method. The gradual and evolutionary nature of
the process however keeps you in control at all times. The
disadvantages are the greater chance you could end up
with nothing at the end, especially if you are new to the
technique and less able to be exible with ideas as thesketch evolves. As this tutorial shows on page 5, you often
have to be able to take a step back in order to progress
along a better route. The ability to be able to scrub out
a lot of the work already done (at any stage, somtimes
even near what you thought was the end!) is an important
one and develops with time as your faith in this techniquegrows.
Where this particular sketch differs from a pure speed-
painting is the use of an underlay and a dened idea of
what vehicle and brand will be. It begins with a strong
foundation and doesnt rely on random forms generated at
the start.
A lot of my tutorials deal with the design being largely re-
solved in black and white then coloured later on whereas
this sketch develops with colour from the start. The colour
is simply sampled from the underlying photo so that there
is no time wasted in deciding on a palette. Owing to the
fact that this brands products are always the same colour,
sampling from an existing product photo felt like the right
approach.
The end result in this case is a loose rendering. It is
something
to be developed much further. However the level of sug-
gested denition and detail is relatively high for an illustra-tion that took less than two hours to produce.
One of the main values of this method is that is allows you
to make an idea convincing and realistic in a short amount
of time. Sometimes it can be difcult for a designer to
know where the sketch nishes and the rendering beings.It is my opinion that now 3D computer modelling and ren-
dering is so accessible and effective, the initial sketching
phase has been freed up.
Condence and Efciency
When you become condent in one area of illustratingyour designs try and do it more quickly. It is logical that
time saved in an area where you know what you are
doing is better spent in another, less certain one. As youbecome more condent in your sketching you will be able
to transfer some of your energies to the later developmen-
tal stages which will require much more effort. If you have
laboured for days over a sketch there is a greater chance
you will either have become bored of it or too attached
to it, or both. A sketch can eaily stop being a disposable
design communication tool and become a work of art in
the eyes of the designer, which can be damaging to the
development of the product.
I highly recommend breaking out the big brushes, throw-
ing caution to the wind and starting to throw some big
marks down on paper from the outset whenever you have
the freedom to do so. As you can see here in this sketch
progression of a retro-futurist Citroen, I rst concentratedon making some big brushstrokes to begin with. These
very quickly sparked off the basic design. The next step
was to recognise the strong aspects, simplify and then
detail the proposal and an hour later a dened sketched
proposal had emerged.
A valuable lesson I was taught at design school is that you
only need very few lines to communicate the basic form of
a car; ve or six in most cases, so keep this in mind from
the outset when creating a theme.
Page 3
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Page 4
Using the existing Case Quadtrac as a base, a very rough
painting is made using colours sampled from the underlay
image. The placement of the main features such as the
tracks and grille are respected and some modicationsare made from the start. To start with, different window
graphics and slightly different lines are quickly suggested
knowing that they will spark off more ideas, even though
they might not be nal design features. The important con-
sideration here is to make the vehicle original as soon as
possible because the aim is for an advanced styling con-
cept. It must also look credible however and therefore it isuseful to base the foundation on an existing real vehicle.
It is also worth noting that I wasnt familiar with this kind of
layout and vehicle which made it vital to closely reference
a real product.
hover here to show underlay image
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Page 5
Now you can see the ideas are starting to ow from the
intitial rough painting and fast, energetic broad brush
strokes are used to capture the essence of these ideas.
Mainly the diagonal line sparked off by the window graphicand more sloping hood/bonnet are emphasised. Also an
extra volume to the rear is suggested in order to break fur-
ther away from the original vehicles proportion and make
new ideas possible. The image has now become even
rougher because there was a sudden ow of inspiration
which needs to be captured quickly. This often happens
and sometimes a sketch needs to take a step backwardsin level of nish in order to really move forwards in terms
of design and overall quality.
At this stage even the background colours are being
sampled and used to help form the outline of the design.
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Page 6
The design that is beginning to emerge has an aggres-
sive, thrusting feel to it which is accentuated with some
dynamic headlamps. The sloping front is exaggerated
even further with a quick mask being made of a wind-screen that covers the hood, becoming more of a canopy
than a functional screen. A little volume is given to the
black plastic cover on the inside of the front track be-
cause up until now this could be an aperture or wheelarch
feature. Its better to start thinking of this as a volume at
an early stage so that it can develop and integrate with the
rest of the vehicles form.
You can see that not much work was done since the last
page but the effect is quite dramatic. The progression is
fast in the beginning and slows down towards the end as
more decisions are made and more care is required to
nish off the proposal.
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Page 7
The canopy windscreen seemed one step too far for an
industrial vehicle and another idea of a top forward sloping
screen is begun with a couple of brush-strokes.
Again, only a few brushstrokes added on this page but
such important ones in the development of the concept
that they needed to be highlighted.
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The headlamps are also felt to be too stylised to be cred-
ible on this type of vehicle. The grille area has some light
cast on it in the form of airbrushed white and this is then
erased strategically to form a rib pattern on the panel.The top forward screen idea contrasts dramatically with
the sloping hood and is also practical and believable so
is developed further into a wraparound screen and side
glass with a quick mask and black airbrush. The rearmost
volume is reduced by brushing over it with white. The
textured brushes are great for keeping the form open to
interpretation so that good decisions can be made beforereal denition happens. The fuzzy edges and out-of-focus
effect helps to remind you that youre nowhere near the
end. A footwell for the steps up to the cab is begun with a
quickly masked black shadow.
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The bodywork is relatively uninteresting up until now so
work is begun on adding more form and features. The
front needs a stronger more industrial feel and a bar is
added which wraps over the grille and takes a separatebodyside surface and links it with the other side. This bar
incorporates a single oodlamp. The bodywork is taken
round the back of the glasshouse to begin to dene the
back of the vehicle and work is done on picking out the
edge a little more with some white brushwork.
Bodywork surfaces are being played around with usinga thin light coloured brush. This is a bit like creating an
under-lay after youre started rendering. The reason I
use a light tone of the bodywork colour is that the surface
boundaries look like they could be highlights or light lines
and dont distract too much.
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A large and highly functional looking single headlamp
unit is added. It is felt that the narrow frontal area of the
vehicle doesnt benet graphically from two separate
headlamps. The single unit allows for a cleaner and morepurposeful design. A relatively large brush is still being
used for these details while they are still being experi-
mented with. The volume of the bodywork needs bringing
out more using light so a gentle sweep of white airbrush
is applied leading from the glasshouse graphic down to
the front grille. This not only integrates the two volumes
but will allow further sculpting into the bodywork with body
coloured brushwork.
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A concept illustration such as this needs to be surprising
and unexpected but still simple and easy to understand.The bodywork on a vehicle like this needs to express
strength and utility and the challenge here is to do this in
a stylish way. A simple arc is masked off and lled with
body colour to create an upwards facing elliptical surface
in a way that is unusual, muscular and simple. It suggests
it is formed around a very large engine and puts the focus
on the power of the vehicle. The top hood surface follows
this new surface down and exposes more of the top ood-lamp housing which now protrudes from lower down. The
far track is brought forward to give a stronger stance and
some more detail is lightly applied to the near track.
When sculpting with colour in this way it helps if you
imagine literally carving from a solid block. Imagine
surfaces continuing beyond their visible boundaries. You
should understand how the boundary would change if the
intersecting surfaces are altered.
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The new surface is perfect to house an elliptical detail that
echoes its outline; a bit like a partial offset. The location of
a combined vent and badge feature is planned for this but
the rst priority is to make its outline graphic work with thewhole design. Consequently an elliptical mask is placed
in the centre of the surface at the peak of the curve and
brushed over with black. It becomes apparent that the
near track isnt really jumping out at the viewer in the way
it should considering the dramatic viewpoint and perspec-
tive so white overlaid brushwork is applied to the track to
increase contrast.
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This is the point at which some sharpening of the whole
image begins. The outline is cleaned up especially around
the glasshouse. Where the bodywork already blends
into the white background some contrasting bodyworkcoloured reections are added to pick out the edge. Black
outlines show the edge of the wraparound glass and a
concave bodywork surface is added to the rear which
contrasts with the bulging, convex hood surface treat-
ment. This now gives a dened design which can have
door shutlines drawn onto it, sharpening up the sketch
even further. The inner track panel is given a more deniteshape and its outline is hardened up to both contrast with
the curvaceous bodywork and work with the triangular
track.
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The blue sky colour left over from the initial sampled co-
lour sketch isnt really helping the image and so is covered
with white. The design now jumps off the page more. The
rst ne details are thought about with some splitlinesbreaking up the inner track panel. Some spray pipes are
sketched on around the base of the grille. The ne details
are begun at the point nearest the viewer which as always
will be the focal point and therefore be more detailed that
the rest of the illustration. Vague detailing is applied to the
main headlamp which is supposed to be frosted and wont
expose much detail - however there is enough to showthere are two lamps inside covered by a single lens. Extra
oodlamps above the cab are outlined.
The detailing at this stage is not made up of serious
propositions and is made in the spirit of the sketch. It is
designed to compliment or emphasise the existing form
rather than conform to strict manufacturing constraints. Itis important however because it helps describe the form
and can inspire real detail ideas later on.
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This type of vehicle is relatively uncommon and in these
instances showing a human gure really helps to under-
stand scale and size. A driver is illustrated to achieve a
sense of scale and as a bonus adds depth and realityto the sketch. The technique for doing this is to use an
overlay layer with a black or white brush used lightly to
pick out highlights and lowlights. The overlay layer means
that the previous details on the glass are not hidden and
the illusion of transparency is maintained.
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Further realism is given to the cab with masked out and
overlaid sillhouettes of the far window openings. A roof
aperture is also created which is casting light on the
drivers face and in reality would provide a lighter andairier feeling cab. The manufacturers logo is sampled
from a real photo and pasted onto the elliptical graphic on
the bodywork. Before it is pasted on, a vent or inset area
is quickly brushed on to bring up the detail level on this
feature because it is close to the viewer.
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The rear is worked into with a at white brush to pick out
an outline and remove a lot of visual weight. There is
nothing packaged in this area and the weight and power
of the vehicle is thrown forward even more if this reawardvolume is removed. The nearest track denitely needs a
certain amount of detail to be convincing and this is ap-
plied quite roughly with a low-contrasting grey. The high
contrast track with white highlights is reassessed as the
realism of the sketch increases. In reality this whole as-
sembly would be very dark and low contrast so from now
on it will be the detail of this area that brings it into focusrather than contrast.
Consideration for the overall values of the rendering will
give it the feeling of being realistic regardless of how loose
it is. If you take a photo and blur it or add lters, it will still
look like a real photo underneath because the basic tonal
values will remain the same.
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Light from the bright white background is wrapped around
the edge of the bodywork front and rear in the form of
reections. The background is cleaned up further and at
the rear is blended into the foreground. The door shutlinesare seen as too unconventional and placed wrongly so are
covered with some solid bodywork colour so that they can
be re-applied.
To achieve the wrapped light effect, take a medium size
airbrush and lightly apply background colour along the
outline. Remember that this is a form of glare so make
sure it fades away gradually. Pick an area for the centre ofthe glare that will benet from it. For instance here I place
the brightest point on the radius where the windscreen
surface meets the hood.
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The door shutlines are re-applied suggesting a more
conventional and feasible aperture which leads down onto
access steps which are quickly brushed in to get an idea
from placement in relation to the door. As well as improv-ing the door shutlines the rearmost dished surface is
cleaned up and sharpened. The top line of the glasshouse
is also cleaned up and straightened to emphasise the
smooth wrap of the windscreen. Some loose ends on the
front oodlamp are removed to give a clean sillhouette.
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The nal main feature is an access ladder which gives
the desired level of functional appearance. It was felt that
hidden steps are too rened and the ladder is important
visually because it is utilitarian looking and sits in theun-styled, functional lower area of the vehicle around the
drivetrain, tracks and chassis. A low level doorhandle goes
in which is large and practical although directional and
styled to t the bodywork. The nished vehicle would be
unlikely to have a styled handle like this but at the concept
stage it makes the whole proposal easier to digest if it
integrates with the rest of the design.
At this point the sketch was considered to communicate
the idea at the right level of detail and impact and it wasnt
worth rening further until it was presented for possible
selection.
I hope this tutorial has been valuable to you and clearlycommunicated the decision making process I went
through when producing this sketch, together with a few
hints to help you re-create work in a similar style.